Thursday, August 6, 2015

Road Construction and home invasion

Enormous amounts of road construction dollars are released twenty months before every major election.

It takes about 18 months for these cash injections to have maximum effect. It has to do with the velocity of money and how long it takes to wash the taste of 60 months of unemployment out of people's mouths. The thinking is that people will feel upbeat and will return the incumbents to office.

Not everybody is happy

Potterville, Michigan, population 2600.

The area circled in orange is where the bridge on M-100 is being widened and repaired.

The area circled in red is where THIS STORY occurred. This area is so rarely traveled that Google street view does not have imagery.

The broken white arrow is the approximate path (one mile long) that the perps fled along.

...10:30pm Saturday. The victims told deputies two (not local) men tied up
the father outside and then assaulted the man's wife and son who were in
the home, before holding them at gunpoint and robbing them.

The father was able to free himself and call
police. The suspects took off before police arrived. Neighbors in the
area subsequently called police, reporting contact with one of the
suspects who appeared to have been running through a swamp. Deputies
eventually arrested one of the men at a business in Potterville and
recovered the stolen property. A 26-year-old man is behind bars on
potential charges of home invasion, armed robbery and unlawful
imprisonment.

Kudos to the father for freeing himself and effectively using his cell phone.

Kudos for the Eaton County Sherrif's department and Michigan State Police for the rapid response.

Kudos to the neighbors for their assistance.

Kudos to the local business that noticed something was amiss.

It will be interesting to learn if the two home invaders had any affiliation with the road crew working on the bridge. It is difficult to imagine any other reason they would have to select that home on that stretch of road.

I guess the cautionary tale is that being remote is no guarantee of safety.